The Cartographers’ Guild is a forum created by and for map makers and aficionados, a place where every aspect of cartography can be admired, examined, learned, and discussed. Our membership consists of professional designers and artists, hobbyists, and amateurs—all are welcome to join and participate in the quest for cartographic skill and knowledge.

Although we specialize in maps of fictional realms, as commonly used in both novels and games (both tabletop and role-playing), many Guild members are also proficient in historical and contemporary maps. Likewise, we specialize in computer-assisted cartography (such as with GIMP, Adobe apps, Campaign Cartographer, Dundjinni, etc.), although many members here also have interest in maps drafted by hand.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ. You will have to register before you can post or view full size images in the forums.

Greetings from Germany

Hello cartographers,
as you can see, I'm new to this board and I truly am amazed to see so much useful stuff on just one site. I'm a 32 year old male from Germany and I'm an avid gamer since my early youth. I was eight when my mother got me the red box (D&D) and I never stopped playing since then. Naturally, as a DM, I had to come up with maps for my adventures and the worlds I built. What once began as pencil drawings on graph paper finally led me to digital mapping as I discovered the GIMP (and Inkscape) early this year.
By trial and error I created maps I was quite pleased with as an amateur. Only after discovering this site I learned, what really can be done with the GIMP! There are many, many great tutorials on here and I'm soooo pleased to have found a site with such invaluable knowledge on map-making.
As I'm still new to GIMP and having only scratched the surface of what really can be done with the prog, please don't expect useful advice from me; at least not now! I guess my skills will grow rapidly when working through the awesome tutorials.

My recent maps pale in comparsion to the awesome stuff here, but I'll post a sample of my latest maps anyway!
This is Ganiordaes, a nation from my homebrew.
This is Truvanesh, a mining-town.
And this is Glazuria, one of the mayor cities of Ganiordaes.
I have done several other maps, but they are similar in style and quality.

I usually draw my maps by hand, scan them and then overwork them using the GIMP. The maps look flat as I haven't figured out how to do shades and decent textures. I guess this will change in the near future!

All of the maps are for my homebrew setting Angraenor, that me and my gaming group are developing since 2004. Infos on the setting can be found at the Angraenor-Wiki. It's all in german though... A world map can be found on the starting page too.

As you already know, english isn't my first language, so please forgive any mistakes in phrasing you'll discover in my posts. I'm trying to improve, though...

Thanks again for the praise and reps, folks! I put some more maps in an album that can be found on my profile page. It's nice to be welcomed so warmly and I hope to become a helpful member of this awesome community.

Good job for your first try Absinth. Gimp can be kind of annoying to try to learn, but you did pretty darn well.

Is there anything you would like to try to learn to style wise to make these maps any better? Or will you try some new GIMP techniques on new maps you make? One thing I would highly suggest is to learn how layer masks work asap, as well as when to use them.